my next tanks (hopefully)

well first off, ill tell you that if you pick the wrong chickleds, they will fight al the time, and you will end up being so angry at the bully fish, you will either net him out and toss him out the window, or get so mad trying to get that bully out of the tank without totaly taking down all your stone caves and stuff that you put in there taking hours of time to set up you, i suggest you go south! get a tiny arowana, tiny aligator gar, tiny oscar, and some other tiny stuff, watch em grow! like the wind! oscars eat anything you give them, but you should just give them pellets, gold fish are about as nutrishoud as bacon, raw bacon.. that you found on the post.

Your mailbox is full. I couldn't respond to your PM. Be sure to clear out a few of your "sent" messages when you clean up the mailbox.

Thanks for the compliment on Gulp.

If you are thinking of going with a 50 gallon oscar tank, I would stick with just 1 oscar personally. They get quite large and need plenty of room. They are great fish to have around and have a lot of "personality"....for a fish. As you have probably read by now, they are also very messy.

Is there anything in particular you wanted to ask me in regards to the PM?

the only fish i think are fun to watch eat feeders are gars, oscars kinda just swim over and chase the feeder like a big doofus running into walls, but the gar, slowly stalks its prey, and at the oppertune momemnt STRIKES!!! so cool...

Feed them feeders and more...

You need to watch Pike Cichlids eat if you think gars are fun! I disgree about feeding feeders to Oscars, Oscars as well as any feeder gulping Cichlid are used to eating live food so it is natural for them and keeps them active as well doing what is instinctive hunting their food... now you should not feed them JUST feeders but a mix is the most beneficial I have found, such as feeders, bloodworms, brine shrimp, beef heart and pellets. The only concern with feeders is you have to watch out for disease, sometimes you will get a sick feeder who will pass the disease along to the Oscar, just watch out for it, it only happened to me once and was not life threatning. Oscars will not grow very well in a 50 unless you just have 1 maybe 2. They are my favorite fish with a really cool personality, have some strong filteration with them because they are messy, and forget about live plants as well since they will rearrange your tank the way they like it. Driftwood, slate and some fake Amazon swords and Anacharis is good. Since they will rearrange the tank, do not keep any kind of sharp substrate or rocks since this will damage them.

You may want to consider a 75 gallon tank for the Oscars. It would suit 2 Oscars quite nicely.

I would neve feed my large cichlids live food. It's not worth the trashing of the tanks bio system and risk of introducing disease. It also makes them more aggressive and harder to mix other fish with. I use pellets, food sticks, freeze dried krill, plankton, tubifex worms, blood worms, etc.

You know these are only the beginning, don't you? Next will be 150s and 180s! :thud: